Celebrity, Revisited

When my older son, Charlie, was 4 or so, he was captivated by Ryan’s World.

A YouTube show, it was little more than a kid a few years older than Charlie opening toys and playing with them. Charlie, apparently, wasn’t the only pre-schooler who found this to be high-quality content, because Ryan Kaji (and his parents) were earning about $25 million a year off the channel at the time.

The success led to some toy deals (naturally) and, from there, an iOS game. Begrudgingly, but admiringly, we supported this budding media tycoon as he continued to grab more of Charlie’s attention (and more of our money).

Then, Ryan (or maybe the team around Ryan) did something I found cool: the toys they sold at target contained codes that unlocked characters in the iOS game.

Welcome to the world of Ryan, it seemed to say. You may not be opening toys in front of 30 million YouTube subscribers, but you can have the same experience around discovery. You can feel like Ryan.

In February, the week after Mr. Beast launched Feastables, we wrote that celebrity and creator-led brands likely faced an under-discussed challenge: an interest in the creator—and not the product—could lead to early distribution wins, but poor repeat rates.

As we wrote then:

If launch sales of creator-led brands is rooted in interest in the creator and not interest in the category, how sustainable is that advantage?

New brands in existing categories largely gain popularity first among heavy category buyers, because the brand has limited reach and is most likely to be discovered by buyers who are willing to more deeply explore the category.

Though these smaller brands are less popular than larger brands, they can have strong product-market fit among early customers and can reasonably assume a level of repeat purchases that will grow over time as reach grows. This creates the possibility of a favorable growth trajectory for the brand.

A creator-led brand, arguably, swings this dynamic in a way that’s potentially harmful for the brand: Acquiring a bunch of non-category buyers leads to sky high initial sales, but less product-market fit among those early customers. This “pop,” then, reduces the likelihood of repeat purchases and creates the possibility of a low or declining growth trajectory.

This is very much exists, but we also think we missed something there. And, given our past experience with a creator-led brand, we shouldn’t have.

Like with the Ryan’s World toys, Feastables is not about the products; not really, anyway.

Feastables is eschewing a number of traditional brand retention elements in favor of the unfair advantage that comes with having a creator who is best known for games, hijinks, and stunts. The latest? A two-pronged launch: one at Walmart, where there was promise that members of Mr. Beast’s crew, would be hanging out (a version of his “ultimate hide and seek” episodes); the other, an online game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, with daily giveaways and a grand prize (a version of his “win a Lamborghini” episodes).

The message? 

You may not ever get selected to be in a Mr. Beast video (he has more than 100 million subscribers), but that doesn’t mean you can’t participate in the world of Mr. Beast. He’s bringing YouTube to IRL.

The Feastables products/Mr. Beast overlap is so strong and so well blended, that it’s quickly becoming hard to tell which is the primary product. And that’s near genius. The products—chocolate and cookies thus far—are not just chocolate bars and cookies. They’re tickets to a world his fans know deeply.

It may be slightly hyperbolic to suggest Mr. Beast is building a modern-day Disney flywheel, this is, it seems, the best framework to think about what he’s building.

While there’s plenty of discussion around Web3’s impact on consumer, building community, etc, there’s less of a discussion on what that might actually look like. Mr. Beast, though, is running a masterclass on that in front of our eyes—even if it took us a minute to see it.

It’s not just CPG. It’s CPG as an extension of (and a feeder for) entertainment. And, to the extent you missed it, too, it’s worth your attention.